Tag: NUFC

Now that the January window has slammed shut, let’s take a look at how much clubs spent on their squad, and also net spend, for the season as a whole.

Newcastle Utd are the second lowest spenders with only £36 million being spent on permanent transfers. Only Bournemouth have spent less with £30 million.

Now, you could put the Cherries spend into context, in that they sold nobody and gave Defoe a massive contract & signing on fees for his ‘free’ transfer, so could be seen as more than £30m, but there we are.

If you look at Net spend (everyone’s fave) then there are 6 clubs below Newcastle in the “table” who themselves had a net spend of a putrid £11m.

They are Liverpool, West Ham, Burnley, Arsenal, Swansea and Southampton. Now, let’s look into that for all of two seconds.

Each of those clubs had at least one major sale which drove down their net spend massively. Some had more than one.

Whereas Newcastle didn’t. They sold their prized assets last season after relegation. The only option they had this year was to spend.

To put this into some context, if you look at fellow promoted teams in Brighton & Huddersfield who also have no prizes assets to sell.

They spent £57m & £49m respectively, with total net spends of £57m & £43.5m. This places them 5th and 8th in the net spend table.

This is where you would expect them to be given their lack of selling power. Brighton sold nobody for eg.

All of this means one thing. Mike Ashley has drastically under-funded his business that he is supposedly looking to sell.

To the point that if NUFC were to go down, it will be worth half as much and he will have cost himself millions.

He will also be unable to receive the total amount he has invested in his time at the club. Around £250m. So he will have lost money if and when he sells.

In the last two occasions that NUFC have gone down, he has been obliged to pump in his own money into the club to keep it running. The only time he has ever spent something himself.

“Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley has loaned the club £33m to help it cope with the effects of relegation. … The £33m loan has been made available through St James Holdings Ltd” – The Chronicle, 6th Jan 2017

So even if he doesn’t sell, he will cost himself millions by needing to spend to keep it running and there is no guarantee the club will bounce back up.

So to conclude, not only will relegation mean the business he is trying to sell will be worth half as much than if it were in the Premier League, but it will cost him a fortune to keep it running…again.

People say Mike Ashley is a sound businessman. They base this totally on his supposed wealth and Sports Direct.

When it comes to running a football club, he is arguably the dumbest owner in football history.

At least when other idiots make mistakes, they sell up and leave. The bloke has been here for 11 years!!!

He has learned nothing over that time. Nothing. What kind of a moron would act the way he acts over and over again? How dumb can you be?

For the record, Mike Ashley has an average spend of £4.5million per season on the team. Which is never going to be successful. Ever. Talk about running something on the cheap.

He said if he couldn’t find a buyer before Christmas he would invest in January, he lied. He spent nothing.

He said he turned PCP’s £250m offer for the club down because he has other people willing to pay the £350m. He lied, he doesn’t.

The man is a compulsive liar and has been proved to be so in court when Keegan took him to trial.

Yet, amongst all of this, his chosen mouthpiece in Sky still hire people like Craig Bellamy, Simon Jordan and Dennis Wise, plus others, to tell the viewing nation he has done a great job and that they really like him.

It’s a disgrace that this man isn’t known throughout the world of football for exactly what he is. A liar and a terrible football club owner. One of the worst, if not THE worst in history.

As a Newcastle fan it is obvious our window was beyond a joke built up of lies and misery. However, I just want to make clear to everyone how either incompetent our administration is or how scumbaggery they are towards our official ‘UEFA Elite Coach’ Rafa Benitez. Or perhaps they are both.

We had in place a deal for Chelsea left back Kenedy sorted TWO WEEKS AGO but it could only be finalised once Chelsea brought in a first team wing back themselves. Fine.

Oxlade-Chamberlain was their first choice but that fell through on Deadline Day morning as he joined Liverpool. So, my amazing club concluded that the Kenedy deal was off.

Now, this is where some serious explaining needs to happen as at 2.30pm Chelsea agreed a fee for Zappacosta in light of missing out on the Ox. The whole football world knew this as the fact he had Costa in his name brought great attention. So, the Kenedy deal to NUFC is back on right? Apparently no.

Despite there being a good 8 hours or so for Newcastle to get in contact with Chelsea and sort out arrangements for Kenedy making his way to the North East in anticipation of Zappacosta signing, which in turn we could confirm Kenedy…Newcastle Utd announced at 7 pm that they had shut up shop with no more business for the day.

Apparently no. Despite there being a good 8 hours or so for Newcastle to get in contact with Chelsea and sort out arrangements for Kenedy making his way to the North East in anticipation of Zappacosta signing, which in turn we could confirm Kenedy…Newcastle Utd announced at 7 pm that they had shut up shop with no more business for the day.

Rafa Benitez has woke up this morning to a first team that is minus a left back. A left back that he had lined up a fortnight ago. Chelsea have their new wing back in place to make the deal happen, so why don’t we have it?

This isn’t due to time restraints as Zappacosta was in place many many hours before the window was due to shut. If Zappacosta deal somehow fell through, then Kenedy would too. That’s fine.

But to not have Kenedy at the training ground last night with medical done just waiting for the nod from Chelsea after Zappacosta was confirmed is totally unforgivable for its senseless incompetence.

Newcastle Utd is ran by con men who should be nowhere near the positions they hold. A 15-year-old boy addicted to Football Manager could conduct transfer activity better than them.

Or maybe it’s down to they just don’t want to bring any much needed new players in. That means spending money. Which we all know Premier League clubs don’t have….?

So in which case…what are you doing here? Get out of my club. What possible enjoyment do Ashley and his administration get out of it? Name me one thing? Shambles.

Once Rafa walks, everybody else should too. Fans first, then Ashley will follow. It’s the only way to get rid of him. He isn’t interested in owning a club with an empty stadium. He will sell and we can finally move on.

My thoughts on Sunday’s game are similar ones to those I have had over the past year watching Rafa Benitez’s team. We lack depth, we lack width and we lack movement off the ball whilst in possession. Pretty much the absolute basics of attacking play. Rafa may (rightfully) moan about missing out on specific transfer targets earlier in the window but this does not explain his needlessly negative strategy, line-ups and substitutions.

Before I go off on a possible rant I would like to make one thing perfectly clear, we are not a bad team. Don’t buy into the mainstream football media’s avalanche of misery they insist on piling onto our club whenever things don’t seem 100% right from the outside looking in. We were not outplayed by Huddersfield, much like we weren’t outplayed by Spurs last week when 11v11, and apart from their goal, the newly-promoted side hardly made a dent in terms of hurting our back line.

Out of both sides, it was us that had the biggest chance of the game when Ayoze Perez blasted over when completely unmarked from about 8 yards out. Substitutes Joselu & Murphy had opportunities to have a clear shot on goal but failed to make the most of them. Out of both goalkeepers, it was Huddersfield’s Jossl that had to pull off a fingertip save to keep out Ritchie’s effort in the first half. If that chance, or any of these chances, go in then it’s a different game and likely different result.

Now that the positives are out of the way, yes, they were positives honest, there is a big elephant in everyone’s room on Tyneside that nobody wants or is prepared to talk about. Some refuse to even acknowledge its very existence under any circumstances mainly due to bigger worries and concerns. However, at some stage, this has to be discussed and looked at. At some point, we need to talk about Rafa.

Amongst all the lack of transfers stuff & the Mike Ashley stuff and whatever other stuff fans want to talk or moan about, there has been one massively concerning issue that has been staring us all in the face over the past year. Rafa Benitez’s overly cautious and needlessly negative approach to our games. More specifically his tactics and use of the personnel he has at his disposal. Do we lack some quality? Yes. Do we have any quality? Yes. Is that quality being used in its capacity? No.

How we managed to win the Championship was quite remarkable to be perfectly honest. You can count on one hand the amount of games where we actually looked impressive and destroyed teams that were below our level. No one can say our Championship season wasn’t one hell of a long struggle. Some say, ‘well that’s the Championship’, maybe.

The more accurate thing to say, however, is that we caused our own frustrations by not going about our business on the pitch anywhere near as positively and ambitiously as we should have. Wingers dropping deep and always coming short. Full-backs chained to the halfway line and unable to get forward. Both centre midfielders dropping deep right in front of our centre-backs. It’s needless and it’s wrong.

Against Huddersfield, these demons in Rafa’s philosophy raised their ugly head once again. 99% will put this down to ‘lack of quality’ or ‘they need more players’. I am telling you now, even with new and/or better players that won’t dispel the demons. The football club needs to change its philosophy when it comes to being cheap in the transfer market. But Rafa also needs to change his philosophy with the players he has. Neither are good enough at the moment.

Gillespie was on around £250 a week at Man Utd and when Newcastle agreed to sell them Andy Cole for £7million, Kevin Keegan insisted on having the flying winger as part of the deal. So when Keegan along with some Newcastle directors and Gillespie were set to meet to sort out his contract, Fergie went along too acting on behalf of his Class of ’92 graduate.

Alex Ferguson acted as Keith Gillespie’s agent in 1995 when he was sold to #NUFC, and got him a wage increase from £250 to £1,200 😂 pic.twitter.com/RXeZSQ19r9

The Scottish cheat was on top form once negotiations began as he blagged that Gillespie was on £600 a week. Not only this he managed to get our genius directors to stump up £1,200 a week in order to seal the deal. Unbelievable. You would think we were absolutely desperate to sell Cole to be fooled into such nonsense so easily.

So we lost Andy Cole and got ripped off on Gillespie. Whether this transfer was actually a good thing in the end is up for much debate on Tyneside. After all, without the sale of Cole we would not have brought in Ferdinand. The 95-96 season would never have happened and we wouldn’t have such great memories of Big Les dominating the Premier League to an whisker of us being Champions.

Then there’s the other argument of well we didn’t win anything and Man Utd with Andy Cole in their side did end up Champions, he also went on score plenty of goals against us and who knows maybe Gillespie would have kept Beckham out of the team and he wouldn’t be what he is today. Now there’s a thought. Pros and cons on both sides but fact is facts and what happened, happened. Good or bad.

What wasn’t a fact was how much Fergie told us Gillespie was on and indeed ripped us off. Fergie telling porky pies and getting away with it…now that’s a fact. Rafa would agree.

Mitro scored a brace for the Serbs in International week so is red hot at the minute and raring to go, despite being mugged off by Rafa. Our Spanish boss will surely now release him into the wild against Brentford on Saturday as we finally play with two strikers on the pitch from the start.

We have been subjected to Diame playing in the hole for most of this season and it hasn’t been a success, despite the team winning most games in the end. We currently sit 3rd in the league which isn’t a great return after 11 games giving the poor standards of the Championship in relation to our squad.

Sticking Mitro up front with Gayle is surely the way forward from now on, especially at home….even if he gets burned now and again!